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According to the Techmeme headline Uber pledges not to use Waymo trade secrets: "Uber settles Waymo lawsuit, pledges not to use Waymo's trade secrets; Waymo wil

• dogecoinbase 9y ago
  Uber has a significant documented history of flouting both the law and agreements they've made?
  • mbesto 9y ago
    1. DK has clearly been telegraphing that they are no longer accepting practices of flouting agreements, no? 2. Isn't that exactly what this settlement is intending to do? It sets the legal precedence for "don't skirt this one, we're serious about it".
• fullshark 9y ago
  The real win for Waymo is what happened to Levandowski and Kalanick after they filed the complaint.
  • toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Uber lost two key employees and paid Waymo for the trouble. Waymo/Google counsel earned their annual bonus.
  • whack 9y ago
    Is it really? I would think Waymo's primary goal is making money for their shareholders, not pursuing personal vendettas.
    • wutbrodo 9y ago
      I would imagine that weakening a competitor in their space would be decently correlated with expected return for shareholders. Not sure where you got the idea that the only benefit would be "personal".
      • whack 9y ago
        Sure, but I have a hard time imagining that "what happened to Levandowski and Kalanick", as individuals, is going to weaken Uber in the marketplace. If anything, going from Kalanick to Khosrowshahi might have actually helped Uber in the long run.
        • kelnos 9y ago
          Yeah, I agree with this. Both Levandowski and Kalanick seem to be incredibly toxic people; removing or lessening their influence on Uber, and replacing them with decent people, would only seem to strengthen Uber's position and reputation going forward.
          • chrononaut 9y ago
            Which interestingly circles back to another comment that was made: > a settlement that requires Uber to do very well to have any value.
    • vkou 9y ago
      Keeping employees from straying too close to the line of 'sharing trade secrets with their next employer' makes money for shareholders. There's a chilling effect. The next Levandowski will think twice before following in this one's footsteps - even if their actions would be 100% legal. The next Kalanick will think twice before hiring him.
      • tytso 9y ago
        Levandowski can't be all that smart if he thought he could download 14,000 documents onto his work laptop, without Google noticing. I mean, hello? Any sane I/T security protection architecture would assume that despite the best security you can put on employee's laptops and mobile devices, a sufficiently determined criminal or state actor is going to be able to get onto the laptop. So having extensive monitoring on work machines is not because you don't trust your employees --- but because you don't trust that the employee's laptop / mobile device is always going to be under the control of the employee. And if it does get compromised, you want to be able to state with confidence how much data might have gotten compromised, or how much access the criminal or state sponsored attacker might have been able to gain access to. The fact that it can also be used to find incriminating evidence for back-stabbing employees who are intent on screwing over their employer is just a bonus. And if he wasn't smart enouh to realize this, I wonder how much Waymo lost and how much Uber gained when they lured him away from Waymo. :-)
        • dzhiurgis 9y ago
          AFAIK the theft was only noticed after supplier noticed that Otto was ordering similar parts as Waymo did, hence notified them.
• tannhauser23 9y ago
  It's meaningless if Uber didn't in fact possess any Waymo trade secrets. You're not allowed to use other people's trade secrets anyway.
  • mbesto 9y ago
    Which implies that Uber needs to start off it's plans to build driverless cars from zero or partner, which is precisely what the lawsuit was about. It's also what Otto's acquisition price was predicated on - that it had built IP from zero for driverless cars. The settlement is an indication that it did not do that, which means they'll likely have to scrap a large piece of it's incremental work. > You're not allowed to use other people's trade secrets anyway. Being allowed to do something and actually doing something are two very different things.
    • xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
      What? Nothing is implied. No one is starting over. Money changes hands and everyone saves face.
      • mbesto 9y ago
        > pledges not to use Waymo's trade secrets If this statement is indeed true and Uber isn't totally brazen, then yes it would imply that Uber is going to have to seriously clamp down on how it uses the data/IP they got from Otto (which clearly they got from Google/Waymo). Not a lawyer, but that's how I read it.
        • tmh79 9y ago
          They didn't get any IP from waymo, that is why waymo settled. There is no additional clamping down, they just need to continue to show alphabet that they're not doing anything fishy.
          • mbesto 9y ago
            See my point above. You don't settle if your claim is 100% baseless, so it's very unlikely that no trade secrets were obtained.
• thinkmassive 9y ago
  Does that mean Uber is valued at $72 billion?